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Saturday, March 28, 2015

Windmill is quilted, bound, washed and in the mail. What a fun and easy process from Sujata Shah's book. She's started a blog for Cultural Fusion Quilts where you'll find many more made by herself and others.

This quilt began with leftover fabric I used to make some centers on Propellers and Planes. I'd set them to the side while deciding whether or not to keep them. But as I was sorting my stash, more fabrics appeared that just went with these wild things.

Windmill quilt

I don't know what came over me: the fabric seemed to magically fall into place and the top was done in a day.

I wrote about the quilting at the bottom of this post. Several quilters posted photos with something similar. They were so lovely but didn't include instructions so I made up my own method. Here's a close up of the tightest section of the curve quilting.

Top left corner of Windmill shows the curve quilting with the smallest radius.

In the opposite corner, the radii are the largest.

Bottom right corner of Windmill where the curve has the largest radius.

Another idea that struck me from other quilters is using leftovers for binding. Here's mine. I really like the black/white/red diamond print both as binding and in the blocks (see the second photo.)

The double fold binding is made from any fabric in the quilt that was leftover again. Cut 2.25" wide by whatever length was available.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Propellers and Planes, my Steam Punk, hung in our guild show this week along with many fabulous quilts by members of SCVQA and BAM. It's the first, and probably only, photo of the entire quilt. The colors aren't quite right; they are much truer in the previous posts, but at least you can see the entire layout of the quilt.

Propellers and Planes quilt

Here it is again in lighting that shows the colors better. But it's not hung high enough. This really is a softly colored quilt with small bits of bright fabrics on occasion.

Propellers and Planes quilt

There is a huge variety of fabrics in this quilt. The oldest was purchased in Boston about twenty-five years ago. The newest were purchased last year. Sue Benner gave me one of her hand-dyed pieces. After being saved (and petted) for more than a decade I used it here. There are scraps from quilts I made for my children, my new daughter-in-law, my parents and my dear friends. Some, like the 50's mannequins, simply make me laugh. All bring back memories of people and places I know and love. Now we sleep under it. What great good fortune. I wish everyone could wrap themselves in cherished memories every night.

A collage of some of the fabrics incorporated in Propellers and Planes

Not wanting to piece batts, I looked for a really large cotton one. There were not many choices but Pellon (yes, the interfacing company) makes one. It's 100% cotton with a very flat, almost felt-like appearance that reminded me of Warm and Natural. It is also warm, heavy and has a beautiful drape - think brocade. It would be a great choice for a wall quilt. Unfortunately, it was only 120" in one direction and I had to piece about four inches of batt in the other direction. Grr.

I used YLI invisible thread (nylon monofilament) for ditch stitching along the sashing then switched to Aurifil Mako 50/2 in grey and light green for the rest of the quilting.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Here's the final photo of my Curved Improv quilt. It was in the guild quilt show last weekend.

Improv Curve quilt

Because the sides are definitely not straight of grain, I wanted a straight edge binding. But the circle at the bottom needed bias binding. So I used bias on that curve only and switched to straight of the rest of the quilt. So far so good. I think it helps stabilize the quilt and minimize waviness.

Although the curve sections look may look like they are uniform width, that's not quite true. For each curve I started on one side or the other stitching parallel with a walking foot. Then I echoed that curve until I ran off the section. That side has quilting lines that run into it. This is probably the first quilt that I did NOT stitch-in-the-ditch. It was pretty scary to start quilting without the stabilization ditch quilting provides but it turned out well. Sometimes we need to try something different.

Because of the improvisational nature of this quilt, a few tucks developed. Each time I re-stitched some of the blades (by machine or hand) to re-flatten the quilt top. One of them appeared while I was quilting. That was a new experience but wasn't too difficult to fix.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It's an irrational number (which just means it can't be written as a fraction because the digits don't end or repeat) whose first few digits are 3.141592653... March 14 is extra special this year because we can correlate those digits to a specific time down to seconds. Nerds are thrilled.

It seems like a good day to celebrate circles in quilting. My favorite circles are my quilt guilds: currently SCVQA and QGGH. I've joined a guild everywhere I lived. They are always a source of friendship, inspiration and education. I hope you have a group of friends as inclusive and supportive.

On to circular quilts.

Although New York Beauty isn't finished, there is some progress. Only sixteen more. Even though these blocks are a decade old, I still like the colors and the pattern. {Why, oh why, didn't I finish it with the millenium?}

New York Beauty in progress

All my quilts in the show this weekend have circles or curves. There have been many photos, but here's a new one. I used this fabric (a decade ago) to applique on t-shirt quilts for my daughter and her friends who all had dogs. This is the last of it. Does that make Propellers and Planes a scrap quilt?

Windmills is my current project. The block has slight curves. I'm echo quilting a quarter circle over the top.

Quarter circle curves echo quilted across Windmills

The quilting shows up better from the back.

Windmills back with leftover blocks.

I drew one line on the quilt using my cutting ruler. I placed it in one corner, rotated the ruler and marked with chalk at intervals. Then I connected those dots. That was my first quilting line. Subsequent lines are a walking foot away. This seemed like a better idea than starting in the corner.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Oops. What happened to the New York Beauties? They're still on the design wall because...

While reorganizing my sewing room some fabrics kept insisting they would look well together. So I pulled Sujata Shah's wonderful book, Cultural Fusion Quilts, and read the instructions for Windmills again.

Although she suggests WOF cuts, several of my fabrics only made one or two squares. It just adds to the diversity.

Improvisational Windmills 60"x60".

Here are a few blocks in progress. Don't they remind you of dad's old ties?